Chunes wrote:How would you make tanks viable in pvp in a balanced way without overhauling the game engine?

FTFY.

a number of 'proposals' that I've seen mentioned are basically 'make wow work differently', which kinda explains why it hasn't happened.

Minimalist change: let them have vengeance in PvP, if necessary nerfing it for Blood DKs. I played Prot PvP casually when there was vengeance, and I was on the margins of being viable. I probably would have been better going ret, but I was not the complete joke I would be now: good enough to be happy to stay in the spec I preferred, even at a modest cost in effectiveness. I was good against melee, weak against ranged. I was in no way, shape or form, overpowered. The almost complete absence of protadins in arena even with vengeance testifies to that. The vengeance PvP nerf seems to have been driven completely by Blood DKs. (And even then, I am not convinced they were OP - may be not fun, in the way that two healers in 2v2 arena are not fun, but not dominating anything.)

Or more generally, rescale tank damage with/without vengeance. I think MoP nerfed our solo damage too low for no good reason - I don't care much about PvP here, just thinking higher level solo questing. There was nothing excessive about our solo/zero vengeance damage in Wrath.

Blizzard have just decided not try to make tanks viable outside of flag carrying and even then, have done nothing to balance different tanks specs when performing in that role. No RBG team will have any use for a protadin.

The pvp taunt being a damage penalty to not targeting them for some period of time: how would that work (or really: how does it work in similar games)?

I mean, would it auto-target the taunter and mark them for the duration? because if it was just a debuff/buff, even with a warning on your screen, it seems like tabbing around to find the taunter would be pretty rough.

I don't have any good ideas that wouldn't require a significant change to not only the game engine, but the game-play paradigm that sits on top of it.

I think of a game like League of Legends when I think of "pvp tanking" done somewhat right. (For you lol players, I'm speaking about the pure tanks, rammus/amumu/singed to some degree, skarner; not bruisers who are more "tanky damage")

Your tanks in that game are (when mid-endgame built) nearly unkillable without either extreme focus or special "anti-tank" items that do %hp based damage, rather than flat scaling damage. They usually come with skill kits that allow them to disrupt the enemy team through CC, taunts, displacements, etc. Finally, they do not have extreme damage output owing mostly to the balance that provides against their high utility and survivability.

Tanks in this role are a threat in as much as they have a team behind them. If you encounter a tank 1v1 in the wild, all other things equal neither of you will kill the other one in any reasonable amount of time. But combine a team behind a tank and the total threat is greater than the sum of its parts.

How you'd translate that kind of concept into wow, I don't know. I doubt it's even really possible. LoL can get away with this kind of thing because there are something like 100 different champs you can select, numerous items to build and different runes/masteries you can select to further specialize the character.

In wow, a roughly equivalent amount of choices are slapped into far fewer classes multiplied by 3 or 4 for the possible specs you can go. You end up having more skills condensed into a single character than the 4 abilities + one or two high CD item abilities you'd see in a MOBA game like league.

Returning back to the dev comment: I think they're (correctly) prioritizing their development resources on this. The amount of time/effort you'd need to pour into a prot pvp revamp that would be fairly balanced is most likely immense. The return you'd get on that investment is the gratitude and increased player enjoyment of a dire minority of the playerbase (the existing tanks that would pvp as such or the other people who would become pvp tanks), as well as the ire of a much larger group of players (the healers and DPS who would now have to deal with the new prot pvpers)

It's the right choice for the game as a business, doesn't mean I have to like it though.

KysenMurrin wrote:I ran out of lesser charms. Annoyed that I'll have to do a load of dailies to get 90 before Saturday's raid. (Okay, so not all that many, but I am totally out of the habit, so it feels like a chore.)

You want to battle the level 1 squirrels by the portal tower in mage district. Grab a kitten (beast) and go for it.

I'm not sure on the exact mechanics, level 6 vs 1 was mentioned but I stopped getting pet XP at that point, so naturally assumed I would stop getting lesser charms. I have been leveling pet to 6, once xp stops, going back to a level 1 pet. I plan to try the level 6 pet when I next log on, I only found the article after I had been doing my method.

Nikachelle wrote:Aside from lythac's trick, I just find that doing pet battles is a lot less painful than churning out daily after daily. But I also don't have a dps spec, so that's mostly just my own problem.

Even if this is nerfed it will still be quite valuable once you don't need valor.. since the dailies are only bearable if you are also getting valor.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Klaudandus wrote:It's the main reason I don't log in to the game once I am vp capped

I'm VP capped on my priest now and the hunter doesn't need it since the 4-pc 502 set would be better than the 522 valor items, so today and this weekend I'll just drag my mage through LFR for Shards (upgrading the gear along the way, of course).

But I might get distracted and try those pet battles..

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Update, either they already nerfed it, or you don't get any charms unless you one-shot, or has to be specific pets, or I just suck... 40+ battles, no charms. (didn't have any level 6 pets, have been using level 4-5).

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.

Sounds like a bad luck streak. Got 95 charms in about an hour taking 5 pets from 1-6 in stormwind, though I had a streak of 25 battles in the middle with 0 charms. Most fights I was 2-hitting, pretty rare to 1-hit and didn't notice higher charm rate from those.

Rhiannon wrote:Sounds like a bad luck streak. Got 95 charms in about an hour taking 5 pets from 1-6 in stormwind, though I had a streak of 25 battles in the middle with 0 charms. Most fights I was 2-hitting, pretty rare to 1-hit and didn't notice higher charm rate from those.

Finally got it going, but had some bad streaks too. 2.7 weeks worth in 3 hours. Need some better pets, might go farm the Zandalari pets and level those to 6 then sell them, as those worked really well.

Amirya wrote:... because everyone needs a Catagonskin rug.

twinkfist wrote:i feel bad for the Mogu...having to deal with alcoholic bears.